One for the Road – China: Restaurant Ordering Guides

by Kelly Amabile on

As a sidebar to this month’s Chinese Buffet series, throughout August, One for the Road will highlight travel guides, reference books and other recommended reads related to life or travel in China.

The final two books from the True Run Media team that I’d like to mention this week are their brand new restaurant ordering guides: Healthy Chinese Cuisine and Spicy Chinese Cuisine are compact glossy flip books that are handy for making sure you order what you really want to eat. Each book includes color photos of popular dishes, and is accompanied by the name of entrees in Chinese and Pinyin, as well as an English, Russian and French translation of all the meals.

A variety of culinary regions are represented — Sichuan, Hunan, Guizhou, Yunnan and Xinjiang. Ingredients for each featured dish are also included, so you know exactly what is supposed to be in what you are ordering. No guarantees, of course — but a book like this might be especially useful for folks with food allergies. The spicy book has dishes like sour lotus root, Kung Pao chicken, spicy cucumber and all kinds of hot stir fry. These guys love their spicy food so much that they also host a Chili Pepper Eating Contest each summer. Is your mouth watering yet?

Talking Travel with Brad Olsen, Sacred Stomper

by Kelly Amabile on

Brad Olsen is the founder of CCC Publishing, the Consortium of Collective Consciousness, based in San Francisco. He is a man who wears many hats — publisher, writer, photographer, producer and artist. He’s also a seasoned world traveler and author of the new book Sacred Places Europe, the latest title in CCC’s series of travel guides focusing on spiritual journeys. Brad researched and wrote the book, and also provided all the photos and maps that appear throughout. Oh yeah, did we mention he dabbles in cartography too?

His strong interests in history, culture, spirituality and humanity have lead Brad down a career path full of creative pursuits and plenty of travel. I caught up with him recently via email for a quick chat about travel, the Sacred Places series and some of his other artistic projects.

How did you first getting started traveling?

It was an innate and insatiable curiosity to see the world in the days of my youth. And with many youthful indiscretions, partying with the opposite sex on the opposite side of the world had its draw.

When did you first begin writing about travel, both personally and professionally?

I started writing my first book World Stompers: A Global Travel Manifesto within the first week of getting my sponsored-visa job to teach English in Kyoto, Japan. That book was in the works for over three years, and has now gone into five editions. When I landed the job, I knew my dream of a self-financed backpacking trip around the world was going to happen. And it did.

Where did you go on that backpacking trip, and for how long did you travel?

I was out of the country for three years solid. I was in Japan for 14 months, Australia for 5 1/2 months, India for 5 months, Indonesia for two, plus Nepal, Thailand, China, Vietnam, Egypt, Israel and a dozen European countries in a month. See my online travelogue Stompers.

How did the idea for the Sacred Places book series first come about?

After a half dozen years publishing travel guides I started looking deeper into the demand of guides and saw an opportunity. From the beginning it was clear I needed to do a whole series on the subject. Besides, during my three-year trip around the world I found myself drawn to sacred places and I had a strong working knowledge coming into the first book.

What are the other titles in the series?

In order, we’ve published: Sacred Places Around the World: 108 Destinations (now in 2nd edition); Sacred Places North America: 108 Destinations (currently being rewritten into a 2nd edition); Sacred Places of Goddess: 108 Destinations (written by Karen Tate) and our latest, Sacred Places Europe: 108 Destinations.

Can you tell us a little bit about the destinations featured in the new Europe book?

It’s a collection of prehistoric megaliths, sacred mountains, pilgrimage destinations, obscure Christian shrines and other lesser-known locales. Some examples: In France, the book features sites like the caves of the Dordogne region and Carnac’s megaliths. In Central Europe, there is Rila Monastery in Bulgaria, Tipova in Moldova and The Visocica Valley Pyramids in Bosnia, to name a few. Special Christian sites pervade the European landscape. There are sections of sacred site listings for Scandinavia, Germany and the Alps, Greece, Italy, Malta, Spain and Portugal too.

One place included in the Great Britain chapter is the assorted monuments around the small village of Avebury, among the most important Neolithic ruins in England. They include Europe’s tallest artificial hill, the skeleton of a monumental stone circle much like Stonehenge, several underground passage chambers, and the remnants of two 1.5-mile (2.4-km) long stone avenues. The Avebury monuments were not just a concentration of elaborate ruins, but also a prehistoric staging ground for seasonal rituals and courting dramas.


Can you share with us a few of your personal favorites from the book?

Like Avebury, the Neolithic sites of Europe really blew me away, both on my first backpack trips across the continent, and during my three-month research trip for the book in 2004. In Holland, the “hunnebeddens” or “giant’s beds” are charming and delightful just like the Dutch people themselves. Ireland is loaded with Neolithic sites like Hill of Tara, Loughcrew and Newgrange.

Why 108 Destinations?

If you were a Hindu or Buddhist, 108 would be one of the most familiar numbers you know. It is sacred for any number of reasons – and fully explained in all my books!

So what was your methodology for choosing the locations you did?

Of course, this is subjective to my own system of qualifying a site. There are some we would all agree upon: Stonehenge, the Scottish stone circle Callanish, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the Great Pyramids. For the secondary tier, I look for what the locals consider a sacred place, and which locations have the best story to tell. I don’t report on battlefield or holocaust sites, nor haunted houses or anything like that.

Have you visited all of them?

Close to 80 percent.

“Sacred travel” and things like “metaphysical tourism” and “spirituality tours” have been growing in popularity. To what do you attribute this trend?

People are looking for more in their vacations besides sipping mai tais by the pool. Why not venture off the hotel grounds and check out some of these sites? After all, they are the places that define the very best of the civilizations that preceded us.

More and more travelers are booking their vacations with the expressed interest of experiencing the power of a sacred place. Taking a pilgrimage is not a new idea, but this type of trip seems to correspond with a growing trend in seeking spirituality on a more individual or secular level — all while having an enjoyable time on an educational and invigorating vacation!

Will there be another title in the Sacred Places series in the future?

Either Sacred Places Southeast Asia: 108 Destinations or Sacred Places Central America and the Caribbean: 108 Destinations. What do you think? Can we take a poll?

Sure, Brad, here’s a handy poll for readers who want to make their pick:

%Poll-1745%

So what’s next for you on the travel horizon?

I’m leaving for a camping and music event up at Mount Shasta, California. We are doing a Peace Tour event in the shadow of the holy mount to see if we can activate the consciousness grid. Go to www.peacetour.org to learn more.

Sounds like another sacred destination worth visiting. Good luck Brad, and thanks for chatting with us.

Talking Travel with Harry Helms

by Justin Glow on

Today, Gadling got a chance to sit down and Talk Travel with Harry Helms, author of Top Secret Tourism: “Your Travel Guide to Germ Warfare Laboratories, Clandestine Aircraft Bases and Other Places in the United States You’re Not Supposed to Know About.”

Here is the unseen America of government facilities and installations protected by a wall of secrecy, deception, and misinformation. It includes huge, isolated areas (some larger than the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island), along with innocuous office buildings located in the middle of major cities. This “other America” has an enormous impact on your life, but you probably have little idea of its extent, scope, and power.

As per usual, we have a few copies of the book to give away, so stick around after the interview to find out how you can get your hands on one.


Hi Harry, thanks so much for chatting with us. How did you get started traveling? Was it something you grew up with?

I was fortunate to have parents who enjoyed traveling, especially my father. He was the sort of guy who was always curious about what was over the horizon and wanted to see it for himself. He also enjoyed visiting obscure, out-of-the-way places, and that rubbed off on me. While I would never turn down the opportunity to visit someplace like Paris, I most look forward to visiting places most people have never heard off.

In your book, you travel around the country and visit “top-secret America.” What kinds of places are these?
These are places that have come into being since World War II, and include government weapons testing and research facilities, bases used to test still-secret aircraft designs, relocation facilities for government VIPs and military officers in case of nuclear war, facilities used for espionage training and communications intercepts—in other words, the sort of places to government would rather you know nothing about!

How did you get interested investigating places you were told to avoid?

This started back when I got interested in visiting ghost towns and Native American rock art sites in southern California, Nevada, and Arizona and started finding these fenced-off areas, complete with warning signs and sometimes security patrols, in the middle of nowhere. I especially remember trying to locate a rock art site near China Lake in the southern California desert; I took an unmarked, poorly-graded dirt road I thought led to the site and instead came to a guardhouse manned by armed guards. Most of these places would not be marked on U.S. Geological Survey or Bureau of Land Management maps, and that got wondering what was going on inside those areas. To find out information about these sites, I had to do digging into such arcane documents as environmental impact statements, aeronautical maps and charts, lawsuit depositions, etc. It was like putting together a gigantic jigsaw puzzle, and I’m still trying to fit a lot of pieces!

Is there any sort of physical or legal danger involved in visiting any of the sites in your book?

Unless you do something really stupid like willfully trespass into a restricted area, you’re in no danger of being shot at or apprehended by security forces. However, visitors to some sites may be hassled by security forces and the local police, and they make ask you to turn off any video or photos you’ve made of the area. As I advise in my book, the best thing to do in such situations is to comply with their orders and then discuss things with an attorney when you get home.

Many of the sites I discuss in my book are located in very remote sections of the American west, and you may be over 100 miles from the nearest gas station or medical care. Your car should be in good working order with a spare tire, and a first aid kit, water, food, and other emergency supplies would be a good idea before visiting such isolated sites.

There’s a certain appeal to discovery, whether you’re plodding through a dense, untouched rain forest, or sneaking around secret government facilities — do you recommend the average Joe go out and discover their own “top-secret” locations? If so, what are some things to keep in mind to stay safe and out of jail?

One of the best tools I’ve found to discovering top secret locations is aeronautical maps and navigational guides. If you see an area that is off-limits to all air traffic, military and civilian, on a 24/7 basis, that’s a very good clue that something interesting and top secret is going on in that area. As always, the key to staying safe, both physically and legally, is to obey all warning signs and avoid trespassing into such areas. That can be hard to do; for example, the boundary at some facilities may be marked only by orange posts spaced 100 feet apart. If you’re not absolutely sure of where the boundary is, don’t push your luck!


Nevada Test Site seen from Google Maps

What’s your favorite top-secret location featured in the book?

Oh, that’s easy—the Nevada Test Site, located about 65 miles north of Las Vegas.

Why there?

One reason is that it’s such an outrageous place—-it’s where 126 aboveground and over 800 underground nuclear bomb tests were conducted between 1951 and 1992. It’s the most heavily nuked piece of real estate on the planet, and has huge blast craters resembling those on the moon, networks of underground tunnels, and replicas of suburban housing developments so the effects of atomic bomb blasts could be studied. While they no longer test nuclear weapons there, they do admit they conduct open-air tests of hazardous materials—-supposedly to study the effects on accidental spills and chemical weapons—and, according to a 2001 report in the New York Times, conduct germ warfare tests there. So the location of the Nevada Test Site isn’t a secret, but exactly what’s going on in there is still shrouded in deep secrecy.

The other crazy thing about the Nevada Test Site is that they offer monthly tours from Las Vegas. They bus you up there, you can’t take any photographs, video camera and binoculars are forbidden, and you’re not allowed to even make sketches of what you see. But you do get to see the inside of the facility and several of the buildings, nuclear test sites and craters, etc. It’s just wild to see such a combination of great secrecy and comparative openness.

The first place that comes to the reader’s mind, no doubt, is Area 51. What did you find there? What can someone expect to see if they follow your lead?

As I describe in my book, there are two access roads leading you to the Area 51 boundary, and they’re both located north and south on Rachel, NV, along Highway 375. If you go there hoping to see space aliens and crashed UFOs, you’re going to be disappointed—-all you can see are warning signs, security guards, and, from the north entrance to Area 51, a guardhouse. The security guards will be watching you from their vehicles parked just inside the Area 51 boundary. I’ve looked at their vehicles through binoculars and have seen them looking back at me through their binoculars, I’ve waved at them, and they’ve waved back. So the security guards there can be friendly so long as you stay outside the border.

At night you will see all sorts of moving lights in the airspace above Area 51. I don’t think these are UFOs, but instead are likely military aircraft, including some still classified secret.

Have you ever found yourself in hot water for accidentally crossing a line, or going where you weren’t supposed to?

Fortunately, I’ve never been arrested but did accidentally wander about a mile inside the Nevada Test Site back in the late 1990s. I came to a dirt road with an open gate, drove down the road, and it wasn’t until I had traveled about a mile that I noticed signs telling me I had entered the site. I turned around and got out, and then noticed “no trespassing” signs on the other side of the gate. However, security has been greatly increased at such sites since the 9/11 attacks and the chances of such accidental entries is much lower these days.

Have you ever been surprised by the lack of security at what is supposed to be a top-secret facility?

Not just shocked, but horrified! For example, there are some nuclear test sites which on public and which can be freely accessed by anyone—-they’re totally unguarded. Radioactive materials could be retrieved from such sites and used to make a “dirty bomb,” for example. But, as I said before, security at most sites has been greatly increased since 9/11.

Is there a top-secret location you tried and tried to gain access to — but just couldn’t? Or perhaps a place so top-secret you chose to avoid all together?

There’s never been a place I couldn’t get close to, but I have heard rumors about several places that I couldn’t confirm. If I couldn’t verify that a place existed, I left it out of my book. While I didn’t avoid any place, there are some sites, like Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, that gave me the creeps. You’re out in the middle of nowhere, so isolated your cell phone doesn’t work and you can only pick up a couple of radio stations, and me and a couple of security guards were the only people within 50 miles. It’s tough to keep your imagination from running away from you in such a situation!

Thanks so much for your time, Harry!

It was my pleasure, and be sure to obey all the warning signs if you visit any of the places I describe in my book!

As promised, we have copies of the book to give away to two lucky Gadling readers! Just leave a comment below and our magical system will automatically select three random winners — but make sure you use a valid email address, as we’ll have to contact you to get your mailing address. For official rules, please click here. Comments and contest will close one week from today, June 27 at 8:00 PM.

Traveling Sketchbook, Stationary People, Interesting Project

by Willy Volk on

Better traveled than many people, Blank is a traveling, collaborative sketchbook journal. For most of the 2005 calendar year, the first book of Blank roamed the country, slowly getting its pages filled with all kinds of glorious doodles, oddball doohickeys, and loving color. Upon conclusion of its journey, the creators scanned the innards of the book and uploaded them for all the world to see.

Book II free-wheeled it through most of 2006. Again, its contents are online.

Books III and IV have hit the road. With dreams of crossing international borders, the end result(s) will no doubt be even more amazing.

If you’re interested in participating in a collaborative art project in which you stay put while the art comes to you, send Blank an email — or read about the similar-yet-slightly-different project Chookooloonks is cooking up.

Gadling Reviews: “The Smart Traveler’s Passport: 399 Tips from Seasoned Travelers”

by Willy Volk on

A few weeks ago, we mentioned that Budget Travel had published The Smart Traveler’s Passport, a nifty compendium of 399 tips concerning the art of travel. Interestingly, each and every one of the tips was provided by the readers of Budget Travel. I was curious to see what ideas “non-professional” travelers could generate and if those ideas would be applicable to my life. To that end, I recently got my hands on this idea-filled book.

Each tip in this book is a clever, practical nugget that helped someone along the way. Some of the tips made me think, “Brilliant” (e.g., use a small piece of painter’s tape to protect the lens of a disposable camera while hiking, page 211). Others made me say, “Huh?” (e.g., pack non-skid bath mats to prevent falling in the shower, page 118). Though I’m pretty sure I’m never going to pack tub mats in my luggage*, I’m confident that one man’s “Huh?” tip is another man’s “Brilliant!” tip.

Moreover, even if I toss out this one tip, there are still at least 398 other useful tips in the book.

Designed to resemble a US passport…

…the 224-page is, nevertheless, much thicker than a regular US passport.

Simply by looking at the table of contents, you’ll immediately notice that The Smart Traveler is NOT a destination guide. While some of the tips are location specific, the bulk of the tips are provided to make you travel smarter, cheaper, and more comfortably — to anywhere.

In short, The Smart Traveler’s passport is a tool to help you think systematically and creatively about trip-taking. Each page has one or two travel tips on it that relates to the chapter at hand. There are no pictures, no ads, and no clutter to distract you from what you want: simple, practical advice on how to get the most out of a trip.

A few of the tips I found useful are:
  • Use laminated city maps, so you can mark your destinations at the beginning of the day and erase them at night (page 158).
  • While flying, a partially inflated beach ball can function as a footrest, back support, or a table for your book (page 90).
  • Don’t save the activity you’re most eager to do for the last day; weather or other forces could make you have to cancel it (page 187).

There are a number of things I really like about this book.

  • It’s clearly organized. I like that it’s laid out simply, one tip at a time. There’s plenty of room in the margins to jot notes to yourself, or to edit the tips with your own variation(s).
  • The advice is practical. It doesn’t focus on expensive or lengthy round-the-world trips that most people don’t take advantage of. Rather, the tips are for “real people” taking “real vacations.”
  • The tips are creative. While I’ve used dental floss on a trip to sew some ripped shorts, I never thought to use it as a ruler. Excellent idea.
  • Many of the tips are applicable to different kinds of trips. You could use this book as a resource when preparing for an across-the-state road trip just as easily as you could use it for that around-the-world adventure you’ve finally gotten around to. Business travelers could benefit from the book, too. I’d suggest looking through the book a week before a road trip and as much as a month before an international trip.
  • Finally, I love that this book “democratizes” travel books. While I support — and regularly depend on — expert guides, I’m delighted by the fact that this book has been made by real people. In other words, it shows that travel isn’t something to fear. Rather, travel is something to relish, think positively about, and have fun with.

The back of the book lists the price as $15, and I definitely think it’s worth that much. However, you can find the book online for as little as $10, which I would consider money well spent.

Have fun! And smart traveling!

* Now that I’ve bashed this tip, I’ll almost certainly wish I’d packed tub mats on the next trip I take.